EE Is Best 4G Network For London Airports And Railway Stations

Steve McCaskill is editor of TechWeekEurope and ChannelBiz. He joined
as a reporter in 2011 and covers all areas of IT, with a particular interest in telecommunications, mobile and networking, along with sports technology.

EE was named best or joint-best network at three of five major London train stations tested and at all three of London’s closest airports. Vodafone reigned supreme (or shared the honour) at two railway termini and O2 one, but Three did not come out on top once.

RootMetrics gives each operator a ‘Rootscore’ out of 100. This takes into account different factors such as speed, reliability, calls and data with the most important criteria weighted more heavily.

Airport mobile coverage

At Heathrow, EE scored 97.9, ahead of Three (92.7), Vodafone (83.1) and O2 (80.5), with the BT-owned operator securing the fastest median download speed of 29.2Mbps and fastest upload equivalent of 21.5Mbps.

Down south at Gatwick, EE was given 95.9, ahead of Three (86.1) and Vodafone (52.3) – but O2 received just 44.8. EE’s speeds here were slower than at Heathrow though – 13.2Mbps download and 13.4Mbps upload – but sufficient to give it a lead in both categories.

EE’s Rootscore for City was 97.7 – enough to give it a lead over Three (94.1), O2 (88.6) and Vodafone 88.8. EE’s median download speeds were fastest at 15.6Mbps and likewise with uploads at 18.7Mbps.

Railway signal quality

The honours were more evenly shared on the railways though. EE came out on top at Waterloo, where its median speeds reached 29.3Mbps download and 28.9Mbps upload, and at Stratford, where it ranked first with 6.5Mbps and 8Mbps.

It shared top spot with Vodafone at Victoria, where the Newbury-based operator finished top in the speed tables with 35.3Mbps upload. Vodafone was first outright at Liverpool Street and O2 performed best at Euston, achieving 33.8Mbps median download speed. EE came third at both

Earlier this year, RootMetrics found EE to be the best network across the capital as a whole, with all three of its rivals ranked joint-second.

O2 has been critical of RootMetrics methods, while Three prefers to emphasise other metrics which take into account things like customer service. However Stonham told TechWeekEurope in an interview earlier last year that the operators could not discredit it’s “scientific” network tests.